Integrating Computer-Aided Dispatch Data with Traffic Management Centers

Chapter 4. Making the Case for Computer-Aided Dispatch-Traffic Management Center Integration

There have been some positive strides toward data sharing for Traffic Incident Management (TIM) over the last several years, and these examples point to the need for continued focus and collaboration for system-to-system data integration between law enforcement Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems and transportation operations. Sharing real-time CAD data has direct impact on agencies’ ability to detect, respond to, and clear incidents in a safe manner, reducing the overall incident duration and the time responders are exposed to risks by being on-scene. In 2019, there were 44 responders who lost their lives in the line of duty responding to traffic incidents.¹⁸ These include law enforcement officers, fire, emergency medical services, tow operators, Department of Transportation (DOT) safety service patrol incident response teams, and others.

Sharing real-time CAD data has key safety benefits for traffic incident stakeholders like responders, transportation agencies and roadway users, including:

• Reduced time on-scene means reduced risk of exposure TIM responders.
• Reduced overall incident time reduces the risk of secondary crashes.
• Improved traveler information and alerts to motorists can provide advanced warning of incidents and inform traveler decision making.

There are also important mobility benefits, agency operating efficiencies, and enhanced capabilities for analyzing performance that result from sharing this data.

There are also benefits for law enforcement by being able to leverage the TMC systems and staff, namely access to video images, to be able to confirm incident locations and better understand what is happening at the scene before responders arrive. The TMC can provide law enforcement (and other responders) with more precise information about lane impacts, restrictions and other important details while they are en route. This helps responders start to formulate strategies for where to safely park in relation to the incident.

Table 1 shows a summary of key benefits that can be realized by law enforcement and transportation operations as a result of sharing real-time CAD data.

Table 1. Benefits of integrated Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD).

Benefits for Law Enforcement Agencies

Benefits for Transportation Agencies

Increased officer and responder safety during incident response. Minimal cost or changes to law enforcement agency processes. Reduced coordination time and distraction for dispatchers at communications centers. Streamlined and improved analysis and reporting for Traffic Incident Management (TIM) performance measures. Reduced requirements for law enforcement agencies to notify other agencies and travelers.

Increased awareness of and faster verification of incidents. Faster mobilization of State Department of Transportation (DOT) response resources to road incidents. Improved incident response and clearance times. Expanded depth and accuracy of data for TIM performance analysis. Stronger justification for TIM resources through performance analysis. Improved traveler information. Increased efficiency and accuracy of Traffic Management Center (TMC) operations.

Benefits of Computer-Aided Dispatch Integration for Law Enforcement and Public Safety Agencies

One of the primary benefits of CAD integration for law enforcement, public safety, and incident responders is accelerating the overall time to respond to and clear incidents from the roadway. Doing so reduces the time required for responders to be on-scene, which promotes safety for both responders and travelers. There are several other important benefits, many of them focused on resource efficiencies and improved processes and tools for performance analysis.

By integrating CAD data with TMCs, law enforcement agencies provide data access to a valuable partner that can help to streamline efforts of law enforcement staff, often at very little cost and with limited process changes on the part of law enforcement agencies. Law enforcement agencies can often obtain several benefits just by partnering with transportation agencies and without having to bear many of the costs, in terms of both financial and personnel resources. Several important benefits are discussed below.

Faster Department of Transportation Response for Safer Incident Scenes

CAD data sharing can improve overall response to incidents by expanding TMC situational awareness and, in turn, faster mobilization of State DOT response resources. The partnership between law enforcement and transportation management agencies allows State DOTs to provide key support for law enforcement on-scene, which is enabled much faster when incident notifications to State DOTs are accomplished quickly. Faster notifications through CAD integration can result in State DOTs being able to set up traffic control on scene, activate traveler information systems to warn motorists, and get specialized incident response crews (including hazardous materials team or maintenance) to scenes faster.

State of the Practice Highlight: After integrating CAD data with the Virginia DOT (VDOT), Virginia saw a 34 percent reduction in incident clearance time on a 67-mile segment of I‑95. The Oregon DOT established an integrated data sharing strategy with the Oregon State Police and calculated a 30 percent reduction in incident response time and a 38 percent reduction in incident duration.

Expand Opportunities to Improve Law Enforcement Systems

Integrating public safety CAD and TMC systems can create opportunities for public safety agencies to upgrade and improve their systems. Transportation agencies might have access to regional, State or Federal grant funding mechanisms, and by partnering, a combined funding proposal could be strengthened by demonstrating a coordinated and collaborative approach. Furthermore, State DOTs and local transportation agencies recognize the value that the CAD data brings to many of their TMC operating processes and their operations mission. There is often a willingness to share costs or provide additional funding for strategies that will help automate CAD data being provided to the TMC.

Improved Performance Analysis

Sharing CAD data with TMCs can streamline and enhance process for TIM performance tracking and reporting by combining CAD data with other operational data to create a robust set of performance reports. Law enforcement and public safety agencies can have the most accurate and complete data from which to do a detailed assessment of TIM performance. Providing CAD data to external agencies enables a robust performance management program; it can be combined and linked to other transportation operations data to create compelling information to support data-driven decision making. Improved data and performance tracking can provide public safety agencies, and transportation operations, with the ability to better plan for and justify key investments in their TIM programs.

State of the Practice Highlight: Minnesota agencies used the combined incident dataset from CAD integration to analyze and compare TIM performance across different incident types. Data showed that the average clearance time for most incident types decreased or generally held steady over the six-year period, where the average clearance time for a specific type of incident (spinouts) was increasing over that same period. Prior to the CAD integration, TMC operators created event records based on what they were able to see on closed-circuit television (CCTV). The CAD data provided a more accurate and robust data set. Furthermore, the Minnesota State Police (MSP) CAD data captured wrong-way vehicle reports in a more accurate way than the crash reports. This information provided MSP and the TMC with more precise information of locations and frequency of wrong-way crashes.

Reduce Coordination and Notification Responsibilities

Providing CAD data to TMCs can help to reduce the burden on law enforcement of multi-agency notifications when there are incidents on the road network. Law enforcement dispatchers are busy coordinating with responders in the field and may lack the capacity to simultaneously notify and update other agencies as the incident progresses. CAD data can provide near-real-time updates to TMCs as new incident details are available. TMCs are a natural hub for multi-agency communications and coordination, and many TMCs already have built-in processes to distribute alerts to key agency partners. There are fewer chances for conflicting information or miscommunications when all parties are working from the same dataset and processes can be automated.

State of the Practice Highlight: The California Highway Patrol (CHP) created an xml data feed of incident notifications that the Patrol makes available to media, the public, transportation agencies and third-party mobile application developers. The media version of this data feed contains limited details such as incident type, location, and timestamp. While TMCs will often want additional details to be able to make decisions, the information is valuable for broader public consumption to promote awareness of incidents. The result was a significant reduction in incoming calls to CHP dispatchers and allowed dispatchers to focus on incident response coordination.¹⁹

Benefits of Computer-Aided Dispatch Integration for Transportation Operations

Transportation agencies and TMCs are focused on processes and information that directly affects mobility and safety on the road network. Many of the systems used by TMCs are designed to directly support situational awareness, detect anomalies in traffic flow and traffic patterns, alert operators and agency staff to issues on the network, and communicate warnings and alerts to travelers.

Improved Awareness of Incidents

TIM data is an integral component to transportation operations’ overall mission. Having access to CAD data can greatly speed up the time it takes to become aware of an incident on the road network. By having more advanced notification of incidents, TMCs can put processes in motion to verify incidents and monitor conditions near the incident scene, begin notifying State DOT response team of incidents and support needs, and issue warnings to other agencies and to travelers. Accurate and complete incident data is a key part of many TMC functions and roles.

State of the Practice Highlight: VDOT indicated that 88 percent of crashes in the VDOT Advanced Traffic Management Software (ATMS) are a result of the CAD data provided by the State Police. Similarly, Minnesota DOT indicated that more than 70 percent of events that the DOT responds to are from the State Police CAD system, compared to less than 10 percent detected through CCTV cameras. In metropolitan Phoenix, State and local agencies have access to 90 percent of the arterial incidents in the metro area through an interface with the Phoenix Fire CAD and Mesa CAD systems.

Improved Department of Transportation Response and Incident Clearance

Accurate and more complete information provided from CAD systems to TMCs results in faster assessment of potential State DOT response resources that are needed. TMCs can quickly dispatch service patrols, hazardous materials teams, and incident response units who will get to the scene faster, establish traffic control and help to protect responders and other motorists. Safe, quick clearance is the result of a combination of strategies working together, and agencies look to leverage any opportunity to reduce the time to respond to and clear incidents faster and more safely. This reduces the time all responders are on scene, limits risk and exposure to dangerous situations, and helps to reduce the risk of secondary crashes.

Secondary crashes pose a significant risk. The FHWA Focus States Initiative for Traffic Incident Management Performance Measures²⁰ recommended that the number of secondary crashes be among the three critical TIM performance measures that agencies should be collecting. The other program-level performance measures recommended by the FSI were roadway clearance time and incident clearance time.

Expanded Performance Measures

Agency ATMS data combined with integrated CAD data creates a rich pool of data from which to track, measure and report on performance. While real-time data supports critical operations functions, more complete historical information obtained through detailed CAD data provides the foundation for a robust performance management strategy. Law enforcement and public safety CAD data can provide the most accurate incident data including timestamps that are critical for incident response and duration tracking, incident types and severity, incident impacts, and responder activities. When combined with additional data elements from DOT ATMS and event reporting systems, which could include traffic volumes, queue length, devices used and activated, and DOT response team details, there is a more complete dataset from which to perform a variety of analyses.

This data can support a wide range of performance analysis and reporting, including detailed after-action debriefs and reports, resource utilization, analyses at each stage of incident response, and incident traffic impacts. This information can be used to identify gaps in TIM response coordination processes and can identify key trends that can help to inform where specific investments might be needed to address TIM performance objectives. Detailed analysis of different stages of TIM response—including incident identifications, agency notifications, response times of different responders, and stages of incident clearance—is greatly aided with a complete data set provided through CAD integration.

Stronger Justification for Traffic Incident Management Resources

Performance data enabled through integrated CAD also helps transportation agencies to identify where additional resources are needed and provide the necessary quantitative back-up to support those requests. Understanding where resources are having a positive impact improving TIM responses processes can inform planning and programming needs, as well as identify where funding could best be targeted. Without a complete understanding of performance outcomes, and reliable data to support funding requests, these resource needs could be challenging to justify.

State of the Practice Highlight: Using a combination of TIM performance data, Utah was able to determine that their incident response teams were responsible for reducing average clearance times by 5 percent. This data helped to justify doubling the size of the Utah incident response teams from 12 to 24 employees. Similarly, Florida was able to justify additional funding for Road Ranger service patrols by using TIM data to run predictive models for incidents and show the benefit of having additional service patrols.

Enhanced Traveler Information

Integrating CAD and TMC systems allows TMCs to provide accurate and more complete traveler information to motorists. Using tools such as dynamic message signs, 5-1-1 systems, mobile alerts, and other strategies, TMCs can disseminate traveler information about incidents ahead, lanes impacted, and potential delays. This allows travelers to be prepared for potentially hazardous conditions on their route or allows them time to make alternate route decisions.

TMC systems can be configured to display only pertinent incident details as part of traveler information that is distributed to the public. While TMC ATMS and event management systems might have numerous fields for various incident details, a limited amount of relevant information can be pushed to 5-1-1 systems, social media alerts, websites, and mobile applications. This provides enough information to alert travelers to incidents ahead without overloading them with too many details.

Increased Efficiency for Traffic Management Centers

TMC operators are often monitoring multiple data sources, terminals, video feeds, and fielding calls and notifications when incidents are reported. Seeking information or checking for updates during incident response can be distracting and there is a risk of missed information. Integrating CAD data into TMC operating systems pushes information directory to operators, rather than relying on manual processes to identify and interpret details. Furthermore, TMC operators often interact with multiple different systems, which can result in the need for duplicate data entries and require them to monitor and update incident details across several different databases.

Streamlining this process by providing a complete and integrated data feed from CAD systems helps to minimize errors, reduces risk of missed information, and allows TMC operators to focus on essential notifications and TMC incident management functions. Improved data sharing also provides for more efficient assessments of DOT resource activity, such as number and frequency of SSP motorist assists.

State of the Practice Highlight: Because of improved CAD data sharing, Oregon DOT estimated that TMC operators spent 60 percent less time on the phone obtaining details about incidents and could focus more of their time on incident management functions.²¹ Minnesota was able to use CAD data to track vehicle assists and frequency of assists, helping to identify drivers who were repeatedly using the state’s roadside assistance program.

Enabling Successful Computer-Aided Dispatch Integration

Previous sections have highlighted several successful CAD integration case studies. Today’s technology, including CAD systems and TMC ATMS systems, allow for much easier data exchanges between law enforcement CAD systems and transportation operations software than older-generation systems. Today’s voluntary data information-sharing standards also help to facilitate easier automated data exchanges than were possible even 10 years ago. There are likely some configuration requirements for data fields to enable ATMS systems to accurately translate CAD data into TMC system events and prepare the data to be used by external systems. These changes can be coordinated through ATMS vendors and application developers, with little effort needed on the part of law enforcement other than a willingness to share CAD data.

Where direct CAD to TMC interfaces could pose challenges, such as TMCs needing feeds from multiple CAD systems, there are several examples of solutions that have been developed to successfully harness CAD data so that it can be used by TMCs and used to support performance analysis. These are described below.

Wisconsin WisTransPortal and InterCAD

A partnership of Wisconsin DOT, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and numerous law enforcement agencies (including the Wisconsin State Patrol, Milwaukee, Waukesha and Dane County Sheriff Departments established the InterCAD system. This system uses an xml data feed from law enforcement CAD systems, filters out sensitive data, and makes pertinent incident information available to the Wisconsin Statewide (TOC) ATMS system. The WisTransPortal is the central repository for the CAD data and is used to support Wisconsin’s Traffic Incident Management Enhancement program, including TIM performance measures.²² The InterCAD system processes approximately 5,000 CAD messages per day, including incident notifications and updates. This information is made available to the TOC operators to support WisDOT’s statewide incident management functions. This CAD data is also supporting emerging research by the university and Wisconsin State Patrol to enable predictive analytics of crash risk and crash potential.

Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments

The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG), the Metropolitan Planning Organization for the Washington, DC area, uses the Regional Integrated Transportation Information System (RITIS) data platform to support a wide range of planning and operations needs. RITIS is a tool initially developed for the Eastern Transportation Coalition, but its data management and processing capabilities are being used by States and regions throughout the United States. RITIS provides a platform to aggregate CAD data from Virginia and Maryland law enforcement CAD systems. The MWCOG is able to leverage the ongoing development of the broader RITIS platform to access multiple data sets, including law enforcement CAD, to support their analysis needs. Sensitive data can be filtered from the CAD data feeds before it is integrated with other transportation applications.